Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday January 21, 2016 @12:38PM
from the strange-spacefellows dept.

MarkWhittington writes: Quietly, the Russians appear to be forming a space alliancewith the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to a story in Sputnik. Not only is Russia in talks to launch Iranian satellites on Russian rockets but also to include an Iranian astronaut on a future space mission. What that space mission might be is open to question. A visit by an Iranian astronaut to the International Space Station would likely kick up a political firestorm with the United States, even though the Obama administration is attempting to develop a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.

Iran? Oh no, sorry. Suicide bombers are more a forte of Saudi Arabia. You know? The only country on the planet that still has no real name other than "The place that the Family Saud owns"? The dictatorship we call an ally?

If you count proxies, there's really no debating that the USA has funded more terrorist organizations, whether you think it's justified or not. Of course the CIA is more discreet, but they eventually declassify it.

Shia muslims don't do that stuff. It's an exclusively Sunni muslim thing. Whenever you hear of a mosque that was bombed, it was a Shia mosque, and the bomber was sunni.

You know...in the middle east over there, all the muslims are pretty much well ALL fucked in the head....so, one joke covers them all pretty much.
And how do you know the difference looking at them between the two?

Do they wear different hats or something? Or, do you not know till they blow up?

Unless you're "upside down" and the North Pole is on the bottom. (Up and down in space mean nothing, and you've still "found" it).
A better indicator would be to point in the same direction of the Earth's spin.

Muslims are supposed to pray toward Mecca, not "east". So they just need to know where they are in space, aim appropriately, and potentially have some angular momentum at times. That's not the tricky one. The tricky one is, what to do about fasting during Ramadan?;) My understanding is that Ramadan fasts may be omitted for a person who is traveling, and so I suspect they'd just define that as "travel".

It's not that hard. In a gravity-dominated, rotating frame of reference, one always has two special directions, namely the rotation axis (north-south) and direction towards the mass centre (up-down). The east-west axis for given point (unless these two are the same, which only happens at the poles) can be defined as a direction perpendicular to both, with east heading forward relative to rotation speed.

Earth's orbit, Solar system, and Milky way are all such systems. And there's little chance they get beyond

Since they'd be flying with the Russians, wouldn't that make 'em cosmonauts rather than astronauts? While I always found the distinction irrelevant, there's still a difference between astro, cosmo, spatio and taiko nauts...

Or are americans really just not good enough to have a term of their own and astronaut just encompasses their (american) scientists as well as all others?

Cosmonaut and astronaut are synonyms. Cosmo is of Greek origin and means "world" or "universe", and in Russian it means, space, thus "cosmonaut" is someone who has been in space.
Astro comes from Greek as well but it means "star". Astronaut is a term that comes from French and literally means someone who has been to the stars (the French being more poetic here).
So it doesn't matter what you call it, the two words can be used interchangeably, but for some reason US media seems to call Americans astronauts

The continents are called North America and South America or "the Americas" (plural) when referring to both at the same time. America is short for United States of America - the only country in the world that has "America" in it's name. It's pretty standard to shorten the country's official name by removing the form of government portion. For example the People's Republic of China, is shortened to simply China, Russian Federation to Russia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia simply as Macedonia. N

The continents are called North America and South America or "the Americas" (plural) when referring to both at the same time. America is short for United States of America - the only country in the world that has "America" in it's name. It's pretty standard to shorten the country's official name by removing the form of government portion. For example the People's Republic of China, is shortened to simply China, Russian Federation to Russia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia simply as Macedonia. Nothing controversial here.

Wrong. America is also a continent. It depends on which number of continents model you follow (it *is* controversial). But when someone says that "Columbus discovered America" (no plural form), a very common phrase even in English, we all understand that we are talking about the continent called America and not the country of the United States.

Also, people living on the continent called America or Americas (it doesn't matter whether it's plural) are called Americans, even though that usage is not frequent i

People need to understand that a more technologically advanced Iran means the world will deal with a more advanced country, and a more advanced government, period. Iran has a lot of extremely smart people who's voices are not heard because they are drowned by the voices of the mentally insane.

The sooner Iran values knowledge and science more than it values blind belief in fairy tales, the better for the rest of the world.

Yes, really. This guy (probably will be male) will be from a technology / engineering background and vetted six ways from Sunday. He won't be there to antagonize anyone despite the junior high mentality here. It is entirely symbolic, but humans love symbolism.

Might even do some good. The only real risk will be to the Iranian astronaut as he would irrevocably be branded as someone working with the Western powers. That might be an issue, depending on how things go. But the only real chance of getting so

People need to understand that a more technologically advanced Iran means the world will deal with a more advanced country, and a more advanced government, period. Iran has a lot of extremely smart people who's voices are not heard because they are drowned by the voices of the mentally insane.

The sooner Iran values knowledge and science more than it values blind belief in fairy tales, the better for the rest of the world.

The real issue here is that we are dealing with an authoritarian government. It's hardly a blind belief, but belief in a control mechanism over society used to justify their authoritarian stance. Becoming more technologically advanced won't help them any more than Germany being on of the most technologically advanced countries during WW2 helped overthrow the Nazis. Speaking out against their blind beliefs will just single people out long before they become a threat to the government. Sure, I do think that b

Did you notice how fast things turned in Iran into the shit show that it is today?I believe that with the correct sequence of events, orchestrated by a talented group of people, things in Iran can turn back just as fast.

The people of Iran wish for it. They are tired of the current regime. Now all you need is the correct players, in the correct places, playing the right moves.

As an American, believe me when I tell you that our government and most of our country (except for a few crazy right wingers) would love for Iran-US relations to improve at least to where each country doesn't cause the other one problems. In fact, I believe that the USA and Iran will one day again be great friends. Whether that is 10 years, 20 years or 50 years from now remains to be seen. But for reasons I won't go into less it digress into a pointless political discussion that never ends, it seems pretty inevitable for me. Just like if you find the average American under 60 years old probably has a very positive opinion of Japan but old people who lived through World War II may still carry some grudges, with time the older generation that hates the other side will die out and the younger generation will reap the benefits of friendship. I don't think having an Iranian on the ISS would be a big deal and if it leads to less tension between the 2 countries, I say "How quickly can we make this happen?"

I am sure Iran has great scientists and visiting space station is not going to help them develop nukes (or at least experiment payload can be screened to rule that out). What objections can we possibly have to advancement of human knowledge, no matter which country the astronaut is from?

Russia has taken to space representatives of many of the former Eastern block countries. Having sent a man to space is a matter of national pride and for the Russians it's easy (and cheap) way to honor their allies and cement their relations with them.
The US resents the legitimacy that such an action will give the Iranian regime and the propaganda that it will generate. I don't think anyone will object having Iranian cosmonaut if not for those 2 reasons.

I'm sure we all remember the hilarious Iran Photoshop of their missile program. Having Iran dependent on Russia for satellite launches means they have one less reason to try to advance their own rocketry science. If all it takes is a token Iranian photo-op on the ISS then that is a pretty cheap win. With oil in the toilet Russia could probably use the currency also, and a stable Russia is probably a good thing.

We know that Iran will use this space program for a sinister purpose. Iran has a history of being a country with an aggressive foreign policy, trumped-up pretext for foreign invasions, tonnes of WMD's, and intimidation of any place that does not agree to their policy decisions. It is known they are mass murderers. Name me one aggressive foreign policy, false pretext for war or WMD that America has. None. We can't trust those foreigners.

In my opinion, an alliance between Russia, Iran, China, India, Vietnam, etc. will define the future. Iran is the ancient civilization. Many concepts and inventions, which we use daily nowadays, were created by the human genius in the ancient Persia.

In comparison, the EU project, or even the US project, have got a serious weakness, - littleness. Eurasia has got 54 million square kilometers of territory, 5 billion population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Am I the only one sick and tired of almost everyday non-news about Russia?
Russia may, Russia will, Russia is planning, Russia is going, Russia wants, etc.
Or: a few decades ago Soviet Union did that thing! - well, not really, but planned, wanted, almost got there, etc.
Things that actually happen in Russia or done by Russia are not that great these days (years).
And certainly most of them are not quite/. material.

I would like./ editors to stop with "future Russian plans" stories, 'cause I can almost give you a warranty that given the today's economical situation in Russia, and given the fact that it's on the verge of collapse next to nothing will pan out in the nearest 20 to 50 years.

I think it is way to early to write Russia off: Russia is big and has most if not all of the raw materials needed for all the important industries, the ties to China are also becoming stronger, and 20 to 50 years is a very long time.

It would have been better if you'd run a story about the Russian ruble. It's dying. [...]

A low value of a national currency makes imports for this country expensive and exports cheaper for buyers, which means a low valued currency is good for export oriented countries. Russia is an export economy [mit.edu]. Considering that Russia mostly exports raw materials, and imports go

Russia's GDP is on par with Italy's and that was before the price of oil dropped below $80 bbl. Between economic sanctions and the price of oil Russia cannot even afford to invest in expanding any of their exports.

The Russian rouble has come under repeated short term attacks by western oligarchs, that always collapse. Russian has many many things far more valuable then inherently vaporous fiat currencies, the resources to back their currency. The rouble will collapse when their resources start to vaporise at the same rate 'money' can, I believe the sun would need to explode for that to happen.

What is happening is a new more cohesive association is forming between countries outside the control of the US government

Actually, NASA does have a detailed contingency plan for dealing with "rogue elements" in space: bind the subject's wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie them down with a bungee cord, and if needed, inject them with tranquilizers, all the while trying to calm them down verbally, explaining what you're doing and why you need to do it.

It sounds kind of funny that they'd take the time to make such a plan, but it was created in case an astronaut for some reason or another goes crazy while in orbit. It's also allowed for if an astronaut is trying to commit suicide.